Preamp for Burmester power amp

nibongese OP

This would be a good one to try nibongese, if your dacs don’t have volume controls to go direct with, it has 3 different modes of operation, all with zero or minimum gain.

It’s all remote controlled with probably the best mechanical volume control available.
You got xlr or se 5 x inputs, and 3 x outputs.
A choice of 2 different low impedance active output buffers, tube, j-fet solid state and a passive which wouldn’t suit.

It’s designed by Mike Moffat of Theta fame so he really know his stuff, and you can return it if not happy.

http://www.schiit.com/products/freya

Cheers George

kalali1,378 posts08-10-2018 3:09amWhy would anyone design an amplifier with only an 1,880ohm input impedance? It makes very little sense unless they want to force the buyer to (also) purchase their supposedly matching preamp. Just curious.

This is a classic con job, it happened with a hiend English company who designed their full range speaker to be way overdamped. Which worked perfectly with their sister companies well underdamped amplifiers.

The amp manufacture then did A/B's at hifi shows here in Australia using of all things a Krell amp to show how much better the bass was on their own amp, because the Krell believe it or not into these speakers had no bass, if very thin at all.

The only advantage to having input impedance's on amps this low, is that it's a great equalizer for different interconnects. They all sound similar, filtering effects are reduced. 

Cheers George      

From what I found the 113 dac gives out 4V!
and the Dac30 is 2.5v

As you can see your 956 only needs .8v into it for full wattage output, so the preamp should be (unity) no gain to get good volume range on the volume control.

Cheers George

nibongese

With the Burmester 956 Mk II with an input impedance this low.
Input Impedance XLR/RCA, 1.88 kΩ / 13.6 kΩ on both xlr and rca.
http://www.rutherfordaudio.com/products/burmester-956-mk2-power-amplifier/

Make sure you have a solid state preamp with nice low output impedance, passives and most tubes preamps need not apply, unless the tube pre has a "paralleled cathode follower" for an output stage, to get the output impedance down to solid state territory, then the tube nutz say they don’t sound to good, but muso’s love them so wt*.

Gain of the 956 is quite high at 31.5db (.8v in for full watts out) so you really don’t need any more preamp gain, all you’ll need is a active pre with unity gain buffer, this way you be able to use a good range on the volume control.
Where with a active preamp with gain you could be at 9 o’clock on the volume for loud listening.
What is your source output level?

Cheers George

nibongese OP
 So what do u mean is I just need a DAC with volume control ?

Oh yes!!, but your the one who said it, now watch the pro preamp brigade chuck a mental, and put a hex on your first born.

If they have volume controls: If not you’ll need that buffered preamp.
The 113dac is 130ohms output impedance so a fine match direct into the 956.
The Blacknote even though it’s tube has an output transformer which is a nice low 75ohm output impedance so it’s fine also into the 956.

Hopefully you can use their digital domain volume controls at 75% or higher and it’s not too loud, below 75% you’ll start to run the risk of "bit stripping" 16bit 14bit 12bit 10bit ect the lower you go on the volume.

Cheers George

They were Linn Isobarics a very over damped design, back in the 70-80’s. When the Linn/Naim retailer Riverina HiFi demo’ed a KSA Krell on them they had very little bass weight!!!!!, yet with the first early Naim 250’s they had had all the bass weight in the world with the Isobarics.
The Naim was said to have a damping factor of only 8. Over damped speaker under damped amp makes for synergy.
Needless to say that Linn/Naim reatier sold many of those combinations, especially when he demo’d Krell!! couldn’t do bass into them!!

Cheers George